Hips are critical to mobility and overall lifestyle satisfaction for patients of all ages. However, hips can strain, rupture, degenerate, and break due to injury, degradation, previous surgery, disease or the like to such a degree that surgical correction becomes necessary. Often, the surgical correction includes the removal of the natural femoral head and replacement with prosthetic implants and replacing both the femoral head and the acetabular socket. It also often includes replacement of the natural acetabulum of the pelvis with a prosthetic acetabular cup.
In some cases, the implanted prosthetics may not function properly for any of a wide variety of reasons including, for example, failure of or damage to the implant, poor tissue healing, the deterioration of the function and/or shape of the supporting bone tissue, subsequent accidents, implant subsidence, pain, wear, premature loosening and/or other patient-related factors. In response, revision surgery, that is, another surgical correction may be required in which the implanted prosthetics are removed, replaced, or modified in the femur or pelvis.
Removal, replacement, or modification of an existing implant can be traumatic and painful for a patient. For example, it may require portions of bone to be resected, which in some cases may impair the structural integrity of the host bone in the femur and the pelvic socket. In other cases, the removal of old implants may disturb the bone stock and alignment required for standard (off the shelf) implants. This often results in reduced amounts of healthy tissue to work with during the revision surgery. Accordingly, revision surgery is often more difficult than the initial surgery because there is often less intact tissue, bone stock, and thinner bone structure, than was present during the initial surgery.
Although there continues to be improvements made to prosthetic hip implants and to revision techniques, a need remains for devices and systems that can more particularly maintain and support the surrounding bone tissue and support the patient's weight, activity, quality of life, while limiting patient trauma.
The implants and systems disclosed herein overcome one or more of the shortcomings of prior art devices.